Sir Oliver Millar

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy seven, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:32

Our castaway this week is an art historian. He holds the office of Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures. It's Sir Oliver Miller. Sir Oliver, could you adapt yourself to loneliness on this island?

Presenter0:44

I'm very happy in my own company. Uh I don't like living on my own, but I could spend quite a lot of time on the island without being bored, I think. How big a part does music play in your life?

Presenter0:54

I'm no performer. I love listening to music. Uh all my life I've adored the gramophone. From my earliest days the gramophone has been my most one of my most

Presenter1:02

continuous pleasures and my children happily enjoy music. Some of them are good at it so music plays an increasingly large part.

Presenter1:09

An enjoyment in my life, certainly. Well, on the island it's still a continuous pleasure, but you've only got eight records. What's the first one? I should definitely choose a piece by Gilbert M'Sullivan. I was very, very fond of Gilbert M'Sullivan as a boy. I can think my whole childhood was spent is summed up for me by these records. And of them, I think I should choose George Baker, the East The Bunthorne song from Patience, if you're anxious for a shine in a high aesthetic line.

Sir Oliver Millar1:36

Yeah.

Speaker 31:40

If you're anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line as a man of culture rare, you must get all the germs of the transcendental terms and plant them everywhere. You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your complicated state of mind. But meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.

Presenter2:05

George Baker singing Bunthorne's song from Patience.

Presenter2:09

What part of the country do you come from, Sir Oliver? I was born in the Eastern Counties. I was brought up first in Herefordshire and then in the northwest tip of Essex. Now you were at Rugby, then at the Courthold Institute of Art. When did you first become interested in pictures? Was it your family? Was it at school?

Presenter2:25

I drew a great deal as a child, and I read a great deal as a child, and my first awareness of pictures came, I think, when I realized that pictures, especially portraits, I illustrated the books I was particularly fond of. I think I first was fond of pictures and I realized that I could see in pictures the characters, for example, from the Three Musketeers. So my love of pictures really grew from my interest in history. Did you ever have ambitions to be an artist yourself?

Presenter2:50

But I drew, as I say, an enormous amount as a child, and I drew and tried to paint a great deal right up to the end of the wall.

Presenter2:56

Um sadly, in some ways, I

Presenter2:59

dropped that when I took up my job and moved into the art historical field.

Presenter3:03

I have never made a living at it. I now once again happily draw a lot. But I had thought seriously as a boy, and as a grown up indeed, that I would try and earn my living in the arts.

Presenter3:13

At the quarter, what did you specialize in? We had to do the normal course. We had to do the uh Renaissance and then English art up to eighteen thirty and then in one special period I did the seventeenth century in Europe and particularly in England, a period I've been always most interested in.

Presenter3:28

You joined the royal household almost immediately after you graduated.

Presenter3:32

Yes, I joined it actually almost before I'd graduated because my then tutor, Sir Anthony Blunt, became, while I was at the courthold, surveyor of the Queen's Pictures. And he then realized somebody else had to go into the office to do the ordinary day-to-day work. And I was therefore appointed to the job as I left the courthold, so I joined it in the autumn of 1947. I had actually been working with him on the exhibition of the King's Pictures in a very humble capacity, so I had some faint idea of what the job involved before I joined it. Yes, you went in as his junior? I went in as his junior with one remove, actually, yes.

Sir Oliver Millar3:50

I had a

Presenter4:04

Your second record, what's that to be?

Presenter4:06

My second record would be Peter Peirce singing one of his country songs, rearranged by Benjamin Britton, The Ploughboy. I was, in my early days, employed on the land. I worked in the farm in Essex, and I've had a great affection always for English country songs. I greatly admire the work of Britton, and I love the voice of Peirce, and I feel these country songs evoke not only my own time on the land, when I was employed on some of the skills which are now entirely vanished, really, but they do sum up for one's affection for nursery rhymes and the old English country songs.

Sir Oliver Millar4:38

A headed cowboy, as simple as may be, And takes a jolly ploughboy, I whistled orderly.

Sir Oliver Millar4:46

No a saucy

Sir Oliver Millar4:48

I stunted woost in lace, and sold Irea Munker

Sir Oliver Millar4:53

Way my jolly friends, when's your word nine?

Speaker 14:53

Yeah.

Sir Oliver Millar4:56

Molted, I'll slip the tradesman's bay, my master's coffee's empty, my

Presenter5:04

Benjamin Britton's arrangement of The Plowboy sung by Peter Pearce.

Presenter5:09

Her Majesty's collection is is very much a family collection. It's been added to by each generation. It's been added to by really every wearer of the crown and by many consorts and princes and princesses, yes.

Presenter5:21

It's fundamentally, of course, a great family dynastic collection. The nucleus of the collection, indeed, are the Tudor and late Plantagenet family portraits, some of which happily still survive in the collection. And to this family collection, of course, there is added generation after generation a great accumulation of dynastic portraits, friends, relations, other continental royal families. So there is this huge dynastic historical backbone to the collection. How big is the collection? It's enormous. It's difficult really to provide an exact figure. I suppose something like 5,000 items are listed as pictures in our vials. When had the collection reached sufficient proportions for someone like yourself to be appointed for expert advice? When was the first appointment of a surveyor of the royal pictures? This was made characteristically by Charles I in 1625. The collection was by then large enough and probably fine enough and diverse enough to require the services of a whole-time official. He was very interested.

Presenter6:16

Charles was obsessed with the collection. He inherited, of course, an enormous collection from the Tudors and from his father and his brother. And he was the first royal collector to attempt, I think, on a very big scale to collect great works of art of the Renaissance and his own time from the continent. How much damage was done in Cromwell's time? Not much damage, not much physical damage. I think the collection escaped the activities of the iconoclasts.

Presenter6:41

But the whole collection was, of course, put up for sale by the Commonwealth regime. They did this in entirely, as they thought, public-spirited fashion, but they did put up for sale the entire collection, and of course, as a result, many of Charles I's greatest possessions passed overseas to rival collectors. Did much of it come back after the Restoration? Almost nothing came back. Everything that actually hadn't left these shores, hadn't actually crossed the Channel. These were stopped. These came back, these stayed. But of course, as I say, the really great possessions had, to a great extent, gone overseas for ever.

Speaker 17:09

Yeah.

Presenter7:14

Let's have your third record. What's that be? I'd like a rendering of that marvellous tune Lilli Bellaro. I've always loved military music, and I've been fascinated always by the seventeenth century. And this great song, one of the most famous of all English marches, was based on an air from the late seventeenth century.

Presenter7:30

And the words of the song, which are said to have whistle James the Second out of his kingdom, were composed by that strange man, Lord Wharton, a great Whig magnate, who, apart from many other things, and leading a very disreputable life, did own, oddly enough, the largest collection of Van Dycks ever put together by any one except Charles I.

Presenter8:21

Lili Bolero. Since Charles I., which monarchs have taken most interest in the collection?

Presenter8:27

George III, George IV, I suppose, and Queen Victoria. George III and Queen Victoria in a very serious, dedicated way, assisted in the case of Queen Victoria, of course, by the example of the Prince Consort. I suppose the most enlightened figure in the history of the collection, though, after Charles I, and the most enthusiastic and the one who's left the most distinguished mark upon it, would be George IV. He had something of Charles I's wide-ranging taste, he had all Charles I's feeling for quality, and he had even more than Charles I, a total disregard of any kind of financial prudence. And he bought marvellously and well and without any regard for money at all. And I think the great group of Dutch, Flemish, and French 17th century pictures which survive in the royal collection happily are the most beautiful single group of pictures acquired by any collector after Charles I. There have been many great painters at court through the years. Well, Holbein and Van Dyck, Gainsborough. Certainly until the time of the French Revolution.

Presenter9:24

Patronage at court, employment by the king or queen, was a very coveted prize for any painter working in this country. Thereafter, of course, royal patronage tended to mean less and less. But it's true, I think, that the most important British portrait painters or portrait painters working in this country did, at some time in their life, work for the court. And of course, the career of a person like Holbein or Van Dyke is almost entirely conditioned by what they did for Henry VIII or Charles I, and they themselves, in return, altered the whole shape of artistic development in this country simply because they were so encouraged by those sovereigns. Yes, and naturally, many family portraits were commissioned. Yes. This was the principal task, of course, of a painter like Van Dyck, and indeed right down to the 18th century, Ramsay, Gainsborough, Zophany, Lawrence, Winterhalter, particularly. This was their continuing chore. The pictures are divided among all the royal houses.

Presenter10:14

Yes, the three main deposits, I suppose, are Buckingham Palace, Windsor, and Hampton Court. There are very good pictures at Kensington, good things at Holyrood, good things at Kew and Saint James's. Yes, they're dispersed all through the royal houses. And they need a lot of keeping track of and and looking after. There must be a a constant rearrangement.

Presenter10:30

There's a continual rearrangement, much more than there used to be, because principally of the opening of the Queen's Gallery. The pictures are moved about in preparation for exhibitions, they leave gaps on the walls, and when they're in the exhibitions, of course, their places have to be made good by others brought in from other places. This is a new departure, the Queen's Gallery. This is something that's always open to the public. This is something always open to the public since, I think, 1962. Yes, it was opened on the site of the old Royal Chapel, and since then has been opened continuously with exhibitions drawn from different parts of the Royal Collections. Not just pictures, of course. Yes. Well, Her Majesty lends a lot of pictures to exhibitions throughout the country. A great many pictures are on loan in the country, and from time to time to really important and deserving exhibitions, pictures are also lent overseas. We've seen a lot of the pictures in the television series Royal Heritage. So you've had television technicians all over the place recently, I expect. Yes, they were indeed. They posed special problems. They're very omnivorous, the BBC, but I think on the whole the results have been satisfactory and it's brought, I think, an awareness of the collection to a fairly large public.

Speaker 110:48

This is something

Presenter11:33

Report number four, please.

Presenter11:35

My favourite composer by a very long way is Mozart, and in his Euvre I am particularly moved by the box of piano concertos recently issued where Daniel Baron Bohm conducts the English Chamber Orchestra. And of the whole box I think the most beautiful piece perhaps comes from the slow movement of the piano concerto No. 21 in C major, a piece of music I find myself putting on repeatedly in different moods, perhaps particularly after a long day with the BBC.

Presenter13:00

Part of the second movement of the Mozart Piano Concerto, number twenty one, in C major.

Presenter13:05

Ballenboem with the English Chamber Orchestra.

Presenter13:08

When was the Royal Collection first catalogued?

Speaker 113:10

Yeah.

Presenter13:11

There are lists from the time of Henry the Eighth onwards, but the first proper catalogue characteristically was drawn up by my predecessor for Charles the First, the first serious catalogue which gives measurements and provenance, and gives you a real impression of a cataloguer seriously getting down to his work.

Presenter13:26

You're working now with your staff on a catalogue raisonnais, a catalogue in depth. Some volumes have already appeared, I believe. Yes, two volumes have appeared.

Speaker 113:31

Some volume

Presenter13:35

Well that catalogue when completed will be an immense work and hardly for the casual purchaser but you just finished a beautifully illustrated general work for the Jubilee called The Queen's Pictures. Yes. This is an attempt to put the fruits of these researches so to speak, particularly our investigations of the early records, out onto a wider field, if you like, so that we can provide a fairly well-documented account of the history of the collection, not only in its early days, but right down as far as one can to the present time, to the period of the Queen's Jubilee. Record number five. I've always had a great affection for the music of Purcell. Again, he worked in the period I'm particularly fond of, and I love the voice of Alfred Deller. I first heard Mr. Della sing a number of years ago, singing Elizabethan songs at a festival in Yorkshire, and ever since I've had an enormous admiration for his voice.

Sir Oliver Millar14:27

I obtain from love sickness to fly in vain, since I am myself my own fever, since I am myself my own fever and pain.

Sir Oliver Millar14:52

They were now the world somehow.

Sir Oliver Millar14:58

With pride we must swear Thou canst not raise forces Thou canst not raise forces Enough to rebear

Sir Oliver Millar15:16

I attempt from love's sickness to fly.

Presenter15:26

Alfred Durler singing Purcell's I attempt from love's sickness to fly

Presenter15:31

Text by John Dryden from The Indian Queen.

Presenter15:34

You were responsible for arranging one of the most exciting art exhibitions I've ever seen, the age of Charles I at the Tate Gallery a few years ago. That must have been an absorbing task. You've got some wonderful treasures together. This was a lovely experience, yes, because it succeeded Dr. Strong's Tudor exhibition, Elizabethan exhibition, which was appropriately very close-knit, very tightly packed, and very intricate. With Charles I, one wanted the space to be more open and to give an impression of the new scale of works of art of that period, to show also something of the nature of Charles I's patronage, how his patronage of great continental painters of his time, and how the quality of his great works of art and pictures particularly affected the lives and styles of painters working in England at his time. And it gave one, I think, a rather tragic glimpse of what might have happened to the arts in this country, painting and patronage and collecting alike, but for the impact of the Civil War on the Commonwealth. If one can imagine how Charles I's collection might have grown, how other artists would have come to this country and worked, how native painters would have flourished under the patronage of Charles I, one gets an almost Habsburg or Medici-like scenario. Yes, indeed.

Presenter16:45

Record number six.

Presenter16:47

As I said earlier, Mozart is my favorite composer by a very long way, and in his work my particular passion is for the marriage of Figaro.

Presenter16:54

It's impossible in one record to give any impression of what one feels about this opera. Perhaps with a combination of voice and score, we could have the Countess and Susannah beginning at least to compose their letter to the Count in Act three.

Sir Oliver Millar17:29

So

Sir Oliver Millar17:39

Sunday!

Sir Oliver Millar17:44

They must be more. A child is the one.

Speaker 117:48

Yeah.

Sir Oliver Millar17:51

Truth of trees above their minds.

Sir Oliver Millar17:59

And I trust

Presenter18:07

Lisa Della Casa and Hilda Guden in the letter duet from The Marriage of Figaro.

Presenter18:13

Do you have any outdoor hobbies or occupations that might be useful on this desert island? I spend all my spare time out of doors. I garden or agriculturally labour a great part of my time. I used to be very, very fond of cricket. I now merely, almost only, watch it. And I have taken up golf again, for which I have an absolute passion.

Presenter18:34

I, as I say, do spend a lot of time out of doors. So you should be all right at looking after yourself. You could certainly cultivate.

Presenter18:40

Any fishing?

Presenter18:41

I could do a little course fishing, which I used to do with my brother many years ago in Essex. I suppose I could catch the odd fish in the sea. I'd be well a hard push to cook it, but I'd have a shot. Any ideas for escaping?

Presenter18:52

To depend terribly on the weather. If there was a nice, calm, settled sea, I'd endeavour to get off after a few days at my records, yes.

Presenter19:00

Good luck. Record number seven. From Haydn. I'm devoted to the symphonies of Haydn, and in particular to symphony number 100, the Military Symphony. And there is a particularly splendid passage at the close of the second movement, where he brings in not only this the marvellous main theme, but a great fanfare of trumpets and a tremendous Turkish march. And not surprisingly, when the audience first heard this in 1794, they rose to their feet and cheered the conclusion of this great movement.

Presenter20:32

The end of the second movement of Haydn's Symphony No. One Hundred, Antole Derati conducting the Philharmonia Hungarica.

Presenter20:40

Now, your last record.

Presenter20:43

My last record would be from Benjamin Britton. My training in opera has been very limited and I'm being educated, as one often is in cultural matters, by my children. I've got a certain stage not far enough with Wagner, but quite a long way with Benjamin Britton, thanks to my daughters. I particularly associate Britton with his work for children, and I'd like to be reminded of a very, very happy afternoon we spent listening with my two eldest daughters, and they're very small, to that marvellous work, Let's Make an Opera. And this is the final chorus from the opera.

Speaker 121:19

Oh man, so

Speaker 121:22

I need a way to see.

Sir Oliver Millar21:33

Romania wait a second for

Sir Oliver Millar21:38

Straight from the mid-hold up from the mild gathering race from the hold on race

Sir Oliver Millar21:46

Better, better, good progress!

Sir Oliver Millar21:51

Our side has a reasonable reason We need to be married and me for

Sir Oliver Millar21:56

Hold up, it's your canter, canter, canter, good round.

Sir Oliver Millar22:09

Oh man, let's see what's going on.

Presenter22:13

Benjamin Britton conducting the final chorus of his Let's Make an Opera. If you would take just one disc of the eight, which would it be? It would be the Marriage of Figaro, and I would hope it'd be awful lot on this one particular disc.

Presenter22:25

And we're going to give you one luxury to take with you.

Presenter22:28

Provided the island had a certain amount of scenery, some plants, possibly some birds, some rocks, I think I would take my sketch book, a pencil, and a pen and ink.

Presenter22:37

And one book apart from the Bible, Shakespeare, and big encyclopedias. I'd make the stipulation: the Bible must be King James's version. Any modern version would be thrown into the sea. I think, therefore, after the Bible and Shakespeare, I should ask for some straight entertainment, and I would, I think, after some reflection, choose Emma. You are a Jane Knight, are you? I am indeed. And when I read those first lines, Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, I get the same frisson of pleasure as I do when I hear the overture of the marriage of Figaro beginning. Emma by Jane Austen. And.

Speaker 122:44

Any model?

Presenter23:09

In your case, I think you should take one picture, suitably sealed hermetically, so that it can come to no harm. Yes, I should ask the UFISI authorities to lend me Hugo van der Goos' great triptych, the Portinari altarpiece. It would present very grave problems of conservation on a desert island. But both back and front are full of the most marvellous passages, most thought-provoking, story-provoking, entirely absorbing, entertaining a picture. Right. And thank you, Sir Oliver Miller, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much. I've much enjoyed it. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 123:50

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.